I shall give you some necessary rules, and you should note that these are natural rules and exist on their own in Nature. When I say ‘Nature’ I mean the intelligent Life. There can be no intelligent Life without rules outside nature. Outside these rules is the foolish life, while the intelligent Life is within the framework of these rules.

Make the following experiment: when you go to a mountainous area, trouble a mountain spring, keep troubling it for ten to fifteen minutes and see what will happen. The spring will start cleaning itself from the centre, to get rid of all the muddy stuff and it will finally start running clear. If you have a watch please note how long it will take the spring to become clear again. Whatever the spring does, you should do it, too. An excursionist comes to your mountain and troubles you in a similar way; but another being from the external world will come and do to you what you can do to the spring – it will stir you within to clean you as if you were a spring. You ask what you should do. Do what the spring does. You will start doing what the spring does. This is the first rule.

You use the expression a ‘free thought’. Under ‘free thought’ I understand a thought functioning according to the laws of Truth. You cannot have free thoughts if you are not in the sphere of Truth. You speak about free desires and free deeds. Bear in mind that your desires can be free only if you are in the sphere of Truth. Your deeds are likewise free, if you are in the sphere of Truth.

Then you say a ‘love desire, a love thought’. Your understanding of a ‘love thought’ should be the same as your understanding about the free thought. In order for you to have a love thought, you should be in the sphere of Truth. Then your love thought will follow not your personal desire, but the laws of Love. If you have a loving light thought, your condition is supposed to immediately change. The law of Love rules the love thoughts, the love desires and the love deeds. You will tone yourselves according to it. Afterwards you will come to the area of the Divine Wisdom; then the thoughts will be light, the desires will be light and the deeds will be light.

You often go to God and tell Him of all your misfortunes, insults: or say, you have lost something or your child died or you are cast out of society, or have a temptation. You come to complain and speak to Him as if He does not know. And what a special attention you pay! God tells you, ‘Tell me the story once again.’ You will have to start telling anew. If God got your point, you will feel light as a feather, if He did not, you will keep the burden on your shoulders, because you failed to recite your lesson. If you performed your lesson well before God, you will feel as light as a feather right away. But you have to do this according to the first method or according to the law of free thought. You have to be aware what method you apply. When you go to God, you will start either with the law of Love or with the law of Wisdom, or with the law of Truth. If you do not speak according to the law of Love, you will speak according to the law of Wisdom or of Truth; you shall not mix these. First you will speak according to the law of Truth and Freedom; if we assume in a human way, that God did not understand you, you will speak according to the law of Love and finally when you speak according to the law of Wisdom, God will instantly understand you and you will feel light as a feather.

So, I say that you have to have to learn to cope with your grievances and suffering. Grief can be a servant to you; can be your son or daughter from the past. You have lived many times on the earth; you have many sons and daughters. They find you, grab you and say, ‘I am having difficulties, I am broke, you will help me!" You are having difficulties, you don’t have anything, but they keep asking from you, ‘You will give us!’ And you start – you ask here and you ask there. As soon as you fix one of your sons, there comes another one; as soon as you fix your second son, there comes the third one, the fourth one, the fifth one, the tenth one – everybody want you to give them something. You say, ‘These desires are very bad!’ It’s not them that are bad, but when such a son of yours comes, he wants you to satisfy him, to send him to study abroad at a university. You first teach him to bend one’s knee, to bow. People used to pray standing on their feet years ago. You will now kneel and tell your desires, ‘You will do as I do!’ By praying you will make your desires pray with you too.

This son of yours is an allegory. What do you have to do with this thought of yours, with this desire of yours? This thought has to be implemented. You cannot drive away a thought, because it will enter somebody else, it will travel the world and it will implement what it wants. If you are the first one through whom this thought passes, you are along the right path. If you are the last one, you cannot get rid of it. If you are in the middle you can get rid of it; if you are the first one, you can get rid of it, but if you are the last one – there is no getting rid of it. Be grateful that it is not always that you are the last one, and you are in the middle or in the beginning, because if you are in the end, you will have to implement it. You will apply the three laws in the end. A thought comes to you and you say, ‘A very bad thought!’ If a thought to steal comes to you, you will steal something, you will rob a safe; you will pinch a bag. This has been proven. If you do not know what to do with this thought, a banker’s safe will suffer and you will suffer together with it. You say, ‘This is impossible to happen to me!’ If this can happen to somebody else, it can happen to you too.

A very pious person passes along the house of a rich banker in America and sees a bag of money forgotten at the window sill. The pious poor person takes the bag, hides it under his coat, goes home and says, ‘The Lord gave me this money. This banker has a lot; it’s no harm to him that I took the bag.’ Afterwards he prepares to pray but as soon as he attempts praying the bag pops up between him and the Lord. His prayer goes to the bag and bounces back. The poor one keeps holding the bag, does not want to return it and tells himself, ‘The Lord is testing me whether I am pleased with the bag or not. I am pleased, my Lord, but allow me to spend the money!’ He prays on the second day too, but the prayer again goes to the bag and bounces back; the same happens on the third and on the fourth day. On the tenth day he feels that he starts losing his enthusiasm and joy and decides to return it. He goes to the banker and says, ‘I was passing along your house, I saw this bag on the window sill and I picked it. Here it is, I am giving it back to you, because I lost my faith in God. As soon as I try praying, the bag pops up between me and God. Forgive me! I do not want to have a bag like yours. If you are prepared to give it to me, I shall see what the Lord will say.’ The banker answers, ‘Come tomorrow!’ He went on the following day and the banker gave him two bags. The poor one tells himself, ‘The Lord puts me through a great test!’ He takes the two bags, but when he starts praying, something within tells him, ‘You won’t spend even a fiver on yourself!’ He goes out and starts giving the money away to the poor. He prays in advance for everything that he has to give away, so that he can be told where exactly to give it. When he gave away the two bags for a year, he went to the banker and said, ‘Brother, you will release me! You won’t give another two bags to me; you will find somebody else, because I have to pray for each coin and to ask where I should give it.’ Events, that have once happened, cannot happen in the same way to you. In Nature things cannot happen twice in the same way. We often talk about abstinence. This is what I understand the word abstinence to mean: when a person applies the Law on Freedom, the Law on Love and the Law on Wisdom, a person must refrain from those thoughts and desires that can infringe upon one’s freedom. Put in other words, you should never take in food that is difficult to digest. The food in the stomach has to be good. I say, ‘You should implement each one of your thoughts that serves to raise you! The same is valid about food: you should eat food that maintains your health; while food that damages your health you should not take in! Each desire that expands your soul brings Freedom or Love into it, you should implement without asking anyone for permission! Each desire that limits your Freedom, that limits Love, you should leave aside! These are internal rules.

There are certain things that you do not know how to implement in a particular case. There is no rule valid about every desire, nor are there any rules about the thoughts. There are general rules, but there are no specific rules as to how to behave in each particular case. An intelligent person stands out in a particular case. If intelligent people act properly, they will progress. At times one may act exactly the way one should not. Whichever way one acts, this does not mean that one commits a sin. If a man eats certain food and then vomits, does he commit a sin or not? There is no sin whatsoever.

But if you are given the same food for a second time, you won’t want to take it in or you will be indisposed after eating it. You may eat less than necessary or you may eat more than necessary. No, in respect to eating you shall take in as much as you should! Moreover, the food has to be of good quality. The same law is valid in respect of the desires: you should select your wishes; you should know whether all these desires reaching your soul are desires for you. In a particular case a desire may be sent to you only for you to forward it elsewhere. This is similar to the case when a letter is addressed to you, it is posted to you, but you hand it in to another person without reading it. In the Spiritual world a letter may pass though ten-fifteen persons. One of your letters may have passed through ten people and each of the recipients might have contributed something. If these people are advanced and good, your letter will arrive studded with gems. If they are not very elevated, they may open it, read it and close it again, in order to get to know what’s written in it.

There are such predicaments along the Path you are walking along, just like the predicaments disciples encounter while learning their lessons. For instance, take the issue about praying, contemplation or meditation; For example, eastern people determine a certain time for this purpose and when it approaches, they will leave their work. Even if he is a clerk, he will leave his job; this is the eastern understanding. And you may be a clerk and meditate nonetheless: take the pen, write slowly, then stop for a while, as if you are thinking and meditate for a minute or two; then write a little again. Because the old master on the earth is not entitled to all of your time. You say that you are an official. Tell me, if somebody is an official, how long does one have to work? Eight hours. Which one is the internal law that makes people committed? Let’s say that you make a transcript of a court ruling; is there any law regulating for how long you have to have made the copy? Each one of you who is a clerk must train the other bank officers to meditate. In this way they will be in a special mood, while now they work in the old way.

An evangelist was telling me the following, ‘Before I learned the Gospel I used to beat the oxen with a prod for no particular reason and I used to say, ‘You have to work!’ But when I read the Gospel I left the prod behind, I no longer stab or beat the oxen. I give them a little bread; I pat them on the horns and on the muffle. When I converted a change took place, even the oxen were wondering what the reason was. This was the power of the Gospel!...’ When the Truth starts taking effect, a change must take place and one should throw away the prod. The oxen will keep going without a prod, ploughing shall not be intervened.

Many thoughts and many desires accumulate in life. For example, a lecture is being discussed two or three times, information amasses and things become commonplace, the way love letters become commonplace. The first love letters are written in a tremulous hand; you already omit something in the second one, you are not so zealous, ardent, or enthusiastic. Only one love letter can one write in the world, there is something missing in the other love letters. Out of all the letters that I have read the first one has always been written best of all, while there have been mistakes in the other letters. When I find a mistake in any letter I know that it wasn’t the first one. There is one mistake in the second letter, there are two mistakes in the third letter, then four, five and in the end, when everything is a mistake, I understand that this is the last letter. Why does one lose one’s interest? One loses one’s interest in Love as well: in the beginning you will consider somebody an angel. The Turks have a saying ‘prince of princes’ about a person who is still free. Afterwards he desires to develop higher, gets engaged and then such a person is referred to as ‘close to the people’. Later on he decides to get married, and the Turks refer to this by the phrase ‘together with the people’. When he cannot live together with his wife and decides to get divorced, he is referred to as a laughing stock to people. In the beginning he is the prince of princes, then he comes close to the people, afterwards he is together with the people and finally is a laughingstock.

Therefore in the beginning a sacred idea shows that we think. One should not get to the last condition. The experiments of the human Spirit to provide a clear idea what should the attitude of man to Life be are actually put in Life. In the end after applying all the methods you will become perfect like the angels, you won’t get married nor will you deliver children. You will be perfectly free; you will have one Life preconditioned by the entire intelligence. Marriage is a Divine school which you should attend and graduate with honours. Some want to break free. You cannot break free unless you are given sixes in all the subjects and in the graduation exams. When the woman and the man graduate, they will say, ‘We finished school.’ When you elevate to a higher level of development, you will gain strength and you will go and teach the other people.

Now, those students that do not know how to study will find fault with the surrounding environment. One may find fault with one’s father that one’s father was not rich, did not have resources or that he himself is not healthy enough. One may find many reasons, but the reason rests with the person himself / herself. Lagging behind is due to another reason. There is one law in the Spiritual world: Everyone must be tested whether one can become the greatest saint. You will be subjected to a test, you will come out last; you will be with the people. If you fail the exam, you will have to sit for it again. The one sent to redo the exam has not passed the exams for saints. He is only the holy second lieutenant and from there will one climb the step upwards.
In this respect when suffering is sent to you, do not consider it unhappiness, but a privilege. When you go to God, you shall not complain. Be grateful for the suffering bestowed upon you; be grateful that you have the opportunity to learn! Suffering is an absolute mystery, it is alive. The suffering you are experiencing is related with the development of thousand beings. You have to understand the internal meaning of suffering and to remain cheerful. As soon as suffering comes, you should become cheerful, smile, sing a little! When suffering comes, don’t you ever ask for how long it will stay! You refresh under a great grievance. You should be able to refresh for five minutes, five minutes is time enough!

Keep a sacred rule within yourself: do not go to God to complain, to worry, to condemn yourself. When you go to God, when He sees you from a distance, you will feel relieved. God is very well aware of your suffering. You want to be cheerful, you cannot, and you ask, ‘Why should I be cheerful; how can I be cheerful?’ To be cheerful in grief does not mean to laugh externally, but to be cheerful within. This is the first rule. Such were the saints: for instance, a knife is stabbed in a saint, but the saint remains calm; the knife is driven even deeper, he is bleeding, but he does not move. It has happened that the person stabbing the knife into the saint cannot bear it anymore, drops down and starts begging forgiveness.

How many people like this are there in Bulgaria now? If there is one, he will be an example to follow! It’s not easy to become an example, an ideal, it’s a great art. Knives come, they keep stabbing you, you jump and at times you say, ‘I went to the bottom of hell!’ A being that is taught by God cannot go to the bottom of hell. This is an impression. Impressions are terrible! When a certain condition is suggested by an impression, you may experience what is going on in somebody else’s soul. This is the worst condition. Somebody else’s thought waylays you all around and may talk to you, ‘Nothing will come out of you!’ You should say like a deep spring, ‘In the name of God, let all these imposed limits go where they belong!’ You all suffer the law of impressions: you say that a sister, what’s-her-name, shall not last long. You are not speaking well. The least you can say about her is, ‘May God comes to her aid and let it be what will be; this is God’s business!’ And you say that she is in trouble. Do not say so, because tomorrow somebody else will say the same about you. God has placed this sister or brother to a test, it is meant for their good. You may think about the brother whatever you like, but he may become a saint.

A person was telling me that he started drinking at the age of thirty. He returned one evening and someone asked him:
- Why are you drunk?
- This is none of your business.

But the other one started beating and hitting him. Later on the person continued his confession. ‘This friend gave me such a sound thrashing, that I developed repulsion to drinking. As soon as I think of going to a place for a drink, a thought comes up into my mind, ‘No drinking whatsoever!’ This person put fear into me, so much fear that I am grateful to him for beating me. He did save me. I prayed many times to God to help me give up drinking, to rescue me in any way. But I thought that a preacher would come and tell me, ‘Brother, stop drinking!...’

There isn’t anybody among you who has not been thrashed. You are also sometimes given the thrashing by the book. If as a result of such thrashing (whichever way it might have been done) you acquire an internal freedom, the suffering was worth it.

Now, there is such a rule: never use the negative, apply the positive! If you don’t know what some work is about, say, ‘This work is for the better!’ What do you gain when you say that nothing will come out of some effort and that nothing will come out of you? Say, ‘Nothing will come out of me the person I am now, but God is stronger that everything in the world!’

You shall start applying these rules! Start with the freedom of your thoughts, so that they can start purifying gradually so that you can acquire this internal freedom. There should be no ambition in you that it is obligatory for you to raise in this life. You should not covet this, but you have to be the masters of yourselves. Good persons should not be afraid of anything. I would like you not to fear anything! You are afraid of the devil, you are afraid of evil people.
I will tell you what a young woman can do, what one, who loves, can do: a person is about to do mischief, he meets a young woman, she takes him by the hand, speaks to him, and afterwards the desire not to do any mischief is born within him. You will ask what the young woman did, whether she enchanted him. You have to be brave during any ordeal you experience in your life. God put you through suffering in order to gain experience, in order to know. You will experiment with a certain person, with animals. And sometimes you may experiment with yourself and you may lay hands on yourself. This is self-training. Go to a brother, look at him, take him by the nose and he will be thankful to you. If this person was not in a position to listen to the lecture, even if he were rich, what use is it? If a person is rich and cannot use his wealth, what use is it to him? I call a rich person a person who can make railways, factories, who can plough, who can employ all of his wealth. This is wealth.

Now you want to make an experiment, don’t you? For example, you are often absent-minded, you are inclined to forget; you do not remember where you placed things. There are a number of methods to improve your memory. Do you know what absent-mindedness is due to? Everyone may become absent-minded when any uncertainty, about what one can do, gains the upper hand in him or her. When one is overconfident, one becomes tense and when one feels unconfident, one is absent-minded. When I see that some people are arrogant, I know the laws; when others are absent-minded I again know the laws.

Many would say, ‘The Spirit talked to me, but I do not remember.’ They demand from other people to remember while they themselves do not remember. The reason lies in their sub-consciousness and actually all should admit that they are not interested. When the Spirit starts talking, you will hear it first of all within yourself. It is impossible for the Spirit to talk to others before talking to me. The Truth must come directly into my soul; if it comes from other souls, it is not a Divine manifestation. Consequently you must know whether or not what you talk about is correct; whether it is good or not. I feel bound to familiarize you exactly with the way the Spirit talks. When God sends a prophet, He tells him, ‘You will go and you will say this and that!’ There is an example in the Bible: David was a great prophet, but he wanted to live like a man. When he sinned God asked Nathan to tell him:

- You know who you were – a little shepherd, but God took you and made you King to guide people. Is this the way you guide them?
God told Nathan what parable to deliver to him:
- There was a rich man and a poor man. The poor one had one lamb and the rich one – a thousand. Visitors came to the rich man but he did not take from his lambs; instead, he took the only lamb of the poor man and feasted his guests with it, Nathan said.
- Sentenced to death! said David.
Nathan told him:
- You did this. Thus spoke God, You did it secretly, but I will make it come out in the open, so that in thousands of years people would know when reading.’
Then David wrote Psalm 51.

So that when God starts talking, He will talk clearly. Divine things are accurately determined. You should not be absent-minded, you should have a memory to remember things; if you do not remember, you will learn to remember; if you cannot think, you will learn to think; if you are not a believer, you will learn to believe; if you do not know how to talk, you will learn to talk since every word has its own effect.

Do an exercise for a week. This lecture is for the sisters, but let the brother do it as well. When you get up in the morning, place one of your fingers on the centre of memory. You may place one, two or three of your fingers there, you may place all of your fingers on the spot of human memory in the middle of the forehead. If you are absent-minded you will then concentrate your mind for your memory to return so that you can remember instances dating several reincarnations back. You will keep your finger on this spot for five to ten minutes, you shall not think. You may sit down on your knee or a-la-Turkish style , you may sit on a chair too, but you have to be calm, nobody should disturb you. Within a week you will accomplish at least one infinitesimal improvement – to remember a word more than previously.

I notice that many of you are dissatisfied with life. The older one grows, the more satisfied with life one should be, not ever more dissatisfied. You are pleased that you met another man, he dies tomorrow and you are left without him and you weep. You have met a mirror image that talks to you from within, ‘Is this so or not?’ These are human contemplations that everyone has experienced.

The conviction that you have started working in another reincarnation is not faith but a superstition. You start working in every reincarnation, but who started when? Two reincarnations ago Simeon was walking the path along which he is now, but he got stuck at an early age. Therefore he comes early now so that he can continue along this path; he starts working from where he broke off. One starts continuing from the age at which one left this world. One might have left this world at the age of fifty-six years; when that person becomes fifty-six of age, then will he start working. Until then one lives without a single worry in the world, eats and drinks, but once this person reaches the particular age, he says, ‘I got completely stuck up, it can’t go on like this!’ Everywhere you link one of your lives with another; you start from where you have finished your previous life. The beings from the Invisible world always use all the conditions, but sometimes they only hint at these. The Invisible world never forces people, but it provides these conditions, if you have the good will. Similarly they tell Simeon, ‘Come on!’, and he replies, ‘Gladly, hopefully I can improve now! Thanks for telling me!’ Simeon takes the violin and starts. When I saw him in Tarnovo, I even told myself, ‘Who could have made him come here?’ I now take Simeon as an example about the links between the separate lives. As you have entered this Path, make use of all the favourable conditions!

You should never be disconcerted with a muddy spring. Perhaps somebody muddled it, or something else happened, but in five, ten, fifteen minutes the spring will be clean. A favourable atmosphere must be created, this is the new aspect. Only in this way the gifts that are hidden in the human soul can develop. Each one has to receive and develop one gift. One should not only pray, one should also prepare to work in a certain area. In this world each one is destined to do something that no one else can do.

There is a lot to tell you, but I will do this later on. First of all you should improve your memory! Remember that your thoughts have to be free, your desires have to be free, and your deeds have to be free! Moreover, your thoughts have to be loving thoughts; all the desires have to be loving wishes and your deeds have to be loving deeds! And then the thoughts have to be light, your desires have to be light and your deeds have to be light! This is Divine! Do not think a lot as to how you will do it or what somebody else would say; do it; fear not!

Somebody comes to you and wants something from you; you should give him the coin you grabbed when you slipped your hand into your pocket; do not slip your hand again to grab a smaller coin. The man says, ‘Slip your hand into your pocket!’; you slip your hand into your pocket, you grab a big coin, you leave it, and then you grab a smaller one. Whatever you grab, you should give, do not look at it! When you do not look at it, you will grab the devil by the tail.

I shall give you an example about John of Kronstadt : a poor widow goes to him and asks him for help. He said to her, ‘I will pray and it will be what the Lord says. Come after a week.’

During this time a distinguished earl died, one of whose heirs was John of Kronstadt. His relative left him eight thousand roubles in an envelope. When the woman came again, John of Kronstadt told her:

- This is what the Lord granted. He called the earl who left this.
When the woman opened the envelop, she got scared and said,
- Brother, you are mistaken; I do not need that much money!
- But this is what the Lord sent through me; take it, use it!

When the time to implement God’s Will comes, we have to implement it properly. When the time to work according to the laws of Freedom comes, whatever we might meet, we have to implement God’s Will. Not to think along human lines, not to allow the vainglorious thought and desire to be blessed by the Lord. When the water fountain comes up, it does not think that it has to come up, because there is an internal pressure. It does not invest any efforts because the water that comes creates pressure.

First, you start along the Path you abandoned. You are not bad, but you have to know where you abandoned the good, you have to find the internal bond. You have to immediately find the place where you left the good; you have to make a bond and to start working. And you should not ask instead what you were in the past. Somebody comes and asks what he was in the past. And I tell him, ‘You interrupted this work and that work, get down and do it!’ Somebody became forty-five years of age and wanted to continue his studies at the university. A reincarnation back he had to leave the university, because he could not graduate by the age of forty-five. Now he comes at an old age and says, ‘I will graduate the university!’ There are grandmothers who sit for their graduation exams at the age of sixty. A desire that they could not implement at the age of twenty-two is coming to life now: they could not finish their secondary education because of love affairs – they had a love affair with this one, and with that one, and they could not finish school. They tricked this lad, they duped that lad, but they did not think of completing their studies. In another case a young lassie obtains a certificate for secondary education, but she leaves for the other world; then she comes back in her third reincarnation as a young woman of envious social standing…
These aspects will become clear to you. Read books and novels of similar contents. The novels for you have been written and are kept at various libraries. You have to possess the printed version of the whole novel where you are the main character. Which one of you doesn’t have a novel? There is no person among you who doesn’t have a novel; you all have novels. Some day when you complete your development, you will go to libraries to read your novel from the beginning to the end and to study your life. You will read how you existed in one of your incarnations, in another, in the third, the fourth, the fifth, the tenth incarnation and after reading your entire life, you will then start reading the lives of the others, of your friends. But this will happen in the future.

Now, I want you all to become like little children. You have become very much adults. Christ says, ‘If you do not become like little children, you won’t enter the Kingdom of God.’ You have to be like children internally, at your heart – you should believe even if you were lied to ten times.

When I was carrying out my research around Bulgaria, I came across a very interesting case: two children were left in baby-carriages – the one was three years old, and the other one – four or five years old. As they were sitting in their baby-carriages, the older one grabbed the younger one by the hair and shook him. The second child started crying, while the one was looking at him very seriously like a professor. Then I saw the younger child grab the older one by the hair and shook him in turn. Now, the older child started crying. Then again the first child grabbed the second one. Thus these children grabbed each other several times and finally they became wiser, they smiled, hugged each other and started kissing each other. This is a performance. I ask what its meaning is. Somebody comes, grabs you by the hair, shakes you; the Divine Will in the world is that when somebody grabs you and shakes you, you are supposed to learn something. The first thing you have to learn is that God loves you. The second thing you have to learn is that you love thy neighbours. The third thing you have to learn is that thy neighbours love you. The first one is that God loves you, and then you love. When the time for you to love comes, you start feeling that people love you. Sometimes someone comes to you and you feel that you do not love him; then another one comes, whose presence is pleasurable to you…

The first thing you have to know is that God loves you, that you love thy neighbours and that thy neighbours love you. This is a program! If you are successful at implementing it, you will resolve your problem.
Now, sing ‘In the beginning was the Word’.